Day: September 22, 2018

Bashful HE:plus Finally Steps Out

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HE-plus went live today. It will be a free, all-access, wide-open site for about three weeks, or until 10.15. Then the paywall will launch and HE-plus access will be yours for a small monthly fee or a single annual payment of $49. The usual HE output is roughly six stories (or riffs or reviews) per day. From here on I will post three stories on Hollywood Elsewhere and three HE-plus stories, and occasionally a bit more or less.

If you don’t want to buy access to HE:plus, fine. And if you want to pay for it, fine. Either way the daily content will be split half and half between the two sites. There’s no turning back now.

The other contributors I’ve spoken to (including World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy) will either step forward and start filing or they won’t. If some don’t feel like going forward, fine. I’ll just scratch them off and no harm done.

Please excuse the changing shape of the front page section — the integrity of the framework isn’t holding firm, and is shifting and squeeze-boxing depending on how small or large you make the browser window. I’ll probably have this fixed in a day or two.

And for whatever reason the front-page openings of each story aren’t displaying the html coding (italics, boldface, underline) that appears when you click through to the whole story.

Every new site has glitches that need refining, but HE-plus is in good enough shape to start rolling now. I’ve only been preparing it for six months. I was initially terrified at the idea of having to fill two columns per day, but if I split this three-and-three (or four and three or whatever) I’ll be okay.

Bad Buzz

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I’ve said three or four times that Irwin Allen‘s The Swarm (’78) is not just the worst disaster flick ever made, but one of the most comically awful films ever made, period. The usual distribution strategy for a stinker is to cut it down as much as possible without destroying coherency. It was therefore odd that Warner Bros. released a 116-minute cut into theatres. But you have to really admire the decision by Warner Archives executives to offer a two-hour, 36-minute version for the new Bluray. A 156-minute exploration of the synergy between killer bees and laughter. You also have to admire how much richer the colors are on the Bluray.

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It Takes Character To Walk Out Of A Film

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Every now and then I’ll walk out of a bad film. Not out of boredom as much as an “irresistable impulse,” which is a rationale that Michigan attorney James Stewart used for Ben Gazzara murdering a guy in Anatomy of a Murder. Every time I do this I get ripped to shreds by “how dare you?” types. It’s very comforting to occasionally read there are fellow Gazzara types out there.

Texas Skateboarder

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From “Beto and Ted — Who’s Ahead?,” a 9.21 Gail Collins column about the Texas Senatorial race between 46-year-old Democrat Beto O’Rourke and 47-year-old Republican Ted Cruz:

“Whatever else you feel, you’d have to admit this race has been darned interesting. Beside the normal fights over guns and health care and immigration, at one point the Cruz campaign called O’Rourke a ‘Triple Meat Whataburger liberal who is out of touch with Texas values.’ The state is still not entirely clear on what that means. Whataburger is a popular fast-food chain, and it seemed a lot like announcing your opponent was a left-wing Big Mac.

“O’Rourke responded by eating a Whataburger and then skateboarding around the restaurant parking lot. We definitely need more of this kind of cheery diversion in politics. People are already talking about a presidential run if he wins. Actually, Beto is so hot that people are speculating about a presidential run if he loses.”

I’m sorry but a candidate for the U.S. Senate skateboarding around a fast-food restaurant parking lot at night? This is huge. This is generationally significant. Has there ever been a serious Senate candidate who can whirl around like this? Before I saw this I was thinking “Beto could win.” Now I’m thinking he probably will.

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“Vice” Refinements

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Last April I read a 2017 draft of Adam McKay‘s Vice, the Dick Cheney movie. (The script was called Cheney when McKay typed the title page; it was later called Backseat.) It struck me as a dark political horror comedy with a chuckly tone. A friend who read the same draft calls Backseat “a mixture of McKay, Deadpool and Armando Iannucci.”

One of the distinctive aspects of the ’17 draft were a couple of scenes in which Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and his wife Lynn (Amy Adams) assess their situation in Shakespearean verse. I don’t recall if there were musical scenes in this draft but apparently one was shot.

In any event Vice (Annapurna, 12.14) research-screened last week in Los Angeles, and at least one guy who attended was enthusiastic.

“This is powerful political stuff,” he began. “A very didactic, matter-of-fact examination of Dick Cheney‘s empirical rise behind the scenes.

“McKay has removed the big comedic set-pieces from the film,” he added. “Missing from the new cut was an elaborate musical sequence and a substantial scene of Bale and Adams reciting Shakespeare. As it stands, the film still works. Now it’s just a more dramatic Big Short. It implements the same style of filmmaking (flashy editing and montage). Bale commits to a transformative performance, and Adams has two early volcanic scenes that can win her the Oscar. Steve Carell‘s Donald Rumsfeld is comic relief. And Sam Rockwell‘s George Bush is little more than a cameo — he appears in three scenes. Plays him as insecure and fragile as you’d hope.”

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